Jenna McKechnie
www.joyjenstudio.com
A mixed-media artist with a love of the natural world, Jenna McKechnie founded Joy Jen Studio in 2016— a design-led brand producing luxurious paper goods including cards, prints, notebooks and notepads, as well as original art. Working in layers of gouache, watercolour, ink, pencil and pastel, Jenna’s pieces are richly textured, blending evocative colour palettes with abstracted natural forms. Based in Leeds but selling internationally, Jenna’s work has featured in Vanity Fair, and was selected as one of the Top Drawer trend predictions for 2021.
Jenna writes:
From a very young age I’ve been deeply into art. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting with my artist granny in her kitchen and experimenting the hours away with different techniques she’d teach me. Although I drifted out of practice after leaving school, I continued to delve into creativity with photography, with a particular interest in the natural world and the magic of the details in plants and insects. After years of immersing myself in photography, and developing a career in wedding photography, I became increasingly stressed with some aspects of that life. I found myself being pulled back into experimenting with art again, just as a peaceful escape, and I haven’t looked back since. I’ve explored many different creative outlets and mediums over the years, but have settled into the joyful freedom of balancing several at once and not tying myself to any particular tool. I love to use a range of different materials in the pieces I create, letting the different textures and lines and shapes create more vivid impressions of the natural world around me. I am drawn to abstract shapes and pretty colours, and also to the sense of freedom and boundless creativity and inspiration that being outdoors gives me. Recently, I’ve been spending more and more time outside with my art supplies. You can’t beat the magic of creating outdoors! Rather than recreating a scene perfectly, I prefer to create a piece that holds the feeling and atmosphere of the place— perhaps by picking out a little detail and making it bigger, like capturing the dancing of a bird across the sky with a lively line rather than a motionless dot. I feel incredibly lucky to call this creative life my full-time job. Producing original pieces alongside paper goods featuring my designs is exciting work and a lovely industry to be part of. I feel I’m still just at the start of a lifetime spent trying to capture just a tiny bit of the magic of the natural world and how it can make us feel.
As well as original pieces, many of Jenna’s works are available as prints, notebooks and cards from the shop on her website.
For insights into her creative process, sign up to her newsletter, or follow her work on Instagram: @joyjenstudio
